In the early 1980's Russ and Lorraine Briggs spent hours (and many evenings) teaching Sheila and me how to play Pinochle. Many of our friends were hosting Pinochle parties and we wanted to join the fun. We played single deck, 4 players (partners), auction bidding, and passing 4 cards between the high bid winner team partners. Each game consisted of 4 rounds (so that each player had a chance to go first). Sheila and I kept cheat sheets handy to remind us how many points each meld was worth. We fell in love with the game.

Four people who I never met also deserve special mention:

• The game was inspired because of work done by a gentleman from Iceland (Einar Egilsson) who created a javascript library (cards.js) and an example game to demonstrate how to use the library. He made the library available to anyone who wanted to use it under what is called a MIT license. I didn't use his engine or his work on any of my games because his work was too advanced for me - if I had used his work you would enjoy this game even more as his animated cards are fantastic.
   
• Part of Einar's work used cards (art work) created by Nicu Buculei who made his work available as well. The card images in this game were created by Nicu.
   
• I would also like to recognize Larry Whitish (who has passed away). Larry created a Pinochle solitair game that I played way back in the days of Windows XP. I enjoyed playing it.
   
• For rules on how to play I relied on both the rules as my family played the game, and on various online rules sites. One of them deserves special mention as my main "go to" site for rules and variations - John McLeod maintains Pagat.com.

Finally, and most important of all my wife Sheila Smith put up with me while I worked on the game.

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